After reading the last section of Educating Esme I now have a different understanding of why the kids misbehaved so much due to the poor towns they grew up in. The beginning of the book never really went into detail about how some of the kids had parents that were in jail,how others were very poor, even homeless, or how some were beaten by their parents. One of the students was sent to school with their two year old brother and when Esme tried to contact the parents no one would pick up the phone. I feel bad that Esme had to deal with all of this on top of teaching her class and it gives the reader a whole new view on how much so really does care about these kids. Some of the things she does is very inappropriate like having a student sleep at her house because their parent got a retraining order. I think we can all agree that Esme does these things because she has the student's best interest at mind but is it really the job of the teacher to do this? Esme had a talk with Mr. Turner about how Esme was called a "bitch" by one of her own students. She believes that the students are not being disciplined enough by Mr. Turner because she gets called names like that very often. Mr. Turner tells her it is because the students are black and black students deal with so much more such as gangs and drugs. I think Mr. Turner is not professional at all and to say this makes me only question his job as principal even more. When I was in elementary school we never disrespected the teachers so it is hard to relate to this issue. Something needs to be fixed at this school, it is not only the students but the structure as well. The fact that Esme does have the highest test scores in the school in her classroom means she is doing something right. I like how creative she is and how the students feel they can come to her and open up to her like the one student did after she stole several things. You could tell how much the students loved Esme from the notes they wrote and I hope when I am a teacher my students will love me as much as they loved Esme.
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